Arnaud Desplechin on Two Pianos, New Hollywood Influences and Next Film

Arnaud Desplechin could also be considered considered one of France’s quintessential auteurs, however American cinema has lengthy been a guiding drive in his creativeness.

His affecting melodrama “Two Pianos,” which had its U.S. premiere last week at the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Film at Lincoln Center, carries bits of these American influences.

“My cinephilia mainly comes from America,” Desplechin told Variety while in New York for the film premiere. “I belong to the generation of New Hollywood — the generation that discovered the films of Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma. I was passionately in love with American cinema.”

“Two Pianos,” which premiered at Toronto and San Sebastián, stars François Civil, Nadia Tereszkiewicz and Charlotte Rampling in a story of unattainable love. Civil performs Mathias Vogler, a once-gifted pianist returning to France after years of self-imposed exile in Japan. Reunited together with his mentor Elena (Rampling) for a collection of live shows, Mathias soon crosses paths with a former lover, Claude (Tereszkiewicz), who selected his best good friend over him.

The celebrated filmmaker, identified for delivering emotional and introspective dramas full of French stars, introduced “Two Pianos” at Toronto and San Sebastian. But he stays a Cannes veteran, having introduced most of his movies to the pageant’s competitors — relationship again to his feature debut “La Sentinelle” and including “Merry Christmas” with Catherine Deneuve, “Frère et Soeur,” starring Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud, in addition to “Jimmy P” with Benicio Del Toro and Mathieu Amalric.

“Two Pianos” itself as soon as carried an English working title — “An Affair,” a nod to Leo McCarey’s romantic traditional “An Affair to Remember,” Desplechin says, before including that he “told François Civil to rewatch ‘The Age of Innocence,’ especially Daniel Day-Lewis,” to organize for the position of Mathias. “Everyone remembers Daniel Day-Lewis’ hands in that film — this man who is desperately in love but unable to act on it.”

The screenplay was written first in English with Kamen Velkovsky, who beforehand teamed with Desplechin on “Jimmy P.,’ together with rising screenwriter Ondine Lauriot dit Prévost, a current graduate of La Fémis college.

“I wanted to work with someone younger than me, and also with a woman,” Desplechin says. “Not because women write female characters better — don’t believe that. But when the writing is mixed, when two different perspectives meet, the characters become richer.”

The writing classes often changed into one thing of a inventive duel. “We would sit with our computers and write the same scene separately. Then we compared. Ondine would say, ‘The Mathias scene is for me,’ and I would say, ‘No, the Claude scene is for me.’”

The director says he didn’t notice how emotionally charged the melodrama was until later in the course of.

“When I arrived in the editing room, I suddenly realized how lonely all the characters were. Each of them is alone in their own life. They come together almost to rub their solitude against one another,” he says.

Desplechin didn’t need to make a classical melodrama. The movie has two chapters — the first one is about Mathias and Elena, then it turns into the story of Mathias and Claude. That duality, which Desplechin attributes to Velkovsky’s enter in the script, gave the movie an uncommon tone. “In the first part there’s something mysterious, almost fantastic. There are ghosts lingering in the story. The film then turns into a melodrama but the the mystery continues to linger; it’s not just about feeling,” he says.

Civil, who’s best identified in France for his roles in “Beating Hearts” and “The Three Musketeers,” unlocked his character in “Two Pianos” by reframing Mathias’ submissiveness as a acutely aware emotional selection. “I told him the character was passive, and François answered: ‘Every moment Mathias chooses to suffer for someone else, that’s his action.’ I thought that was beautiful,” Desplechin reminisced.

He’s equally enthusiastic about Tereszkiewicz, whose worldwide profile is poised to blow up as she gears as much as star in season 4 of Mike White’s HBO’s hit anthology collection “The White Lotus” which can soon start filming in St. Tropez. In “Two Pianos,” she performs a girl torn between two males who emancipates herself by means of grief.

“Nadia has an extraordinary photogenic quality. She has light in her. She has this rage to perform and a generosity with directors. There are actors who could end up crushed by ‘The White Lotus’ experience, but it will carry her because she has what it takes to last,” he says.

Desplechin is now making ready his next movie, “The Thing That Hurts,” an English-language bittersweet comedy set in Paris and written as soon as again with Velkovsky.

“This one is truly a comedy, a bittersweet comedy. It’s about expats in Paris. Something a little like ‘Midnight in Paris.’”

The project will comply with a number of intertwined tales — seven characters linked by means of a psychoanalyst. The worldwide forged will embody a French actor, two Brits and 4 Americans.

“There are seven stories. “Like ‘Seven Samurai’ or ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ And in the middle there is the queen — the psychoanalyst,” Desplechin says with amusing.

The filmmaker says he contributed to the script by sharing the many humorous psychoanalysis tales he is aware of, while Velkovsky introduced his love of American comedy.

“Kamen loves Billy Wilder, Woody Allen, that whole tradition of American comedy, so when we worked together on the script, he asked me to tell stories – stories about psychoanalysis, stories about people I’ve met — and he turned them into narrative.”

The film, which is being produced by Charles Gillibert’s CG Cinema, Alaz Film, 3six9 Studio and Wrong Men, will soon start filming.

For Desplechin, the transfer towards English-language filmmaking isn’t about leaving France behind however increasing the dialogue with the cinema that formed him while tapping right into a wider pool of expertise.

“I know American and British actors very well. It’s another culture that interests me a lot, and I thought to myself: It would be nice to invite Anglo-Saxon actors to make a French comedy with me in Paris,” he says. “I’m very happy to make films in France, it suits me very well, but I love American actors so much, I love American comedies. If I can make a film in Paris that has a little bit of ‘Notting Hill,’ then I’m happy.”

Desplechin also believes American audiences stay uniquely curious about discovering cinema from elsewhere — one thing he has noticed repeatedly while attending the Rendez-Vous event and the New York Film Festival at the Lincoln Center.

“American audiences say, ‘What do you have to tell me? Surprise me,’” Desplechin says. “There is a curiosity for cinema there that I find extraordinary.”